The Best Intentions Read Free Page B

then turns back to his desk, leafs through the examination book, and finally hands it to Henrik.
    Professor Sundelius: I suggest, Mr. Bergman, that you take a walk in the botanical gardens. There is a great deal there to marvel at at this time in the spring. Either one believes in Almighty God, or one doesn’t. Good-bye, Mr. Bergman, and welcome back at the end of November. Perhaps I should add that my introductory statement does not apply to you. I think you will be a good priest, regardless of the Symbolum or the Apostolic Fathers.
    The professor nods, indicating thereby that Henrik should retire. No one can maintain that the Dreaded Sundelius smiles, but he looks at Henrik Bergman with something resembling curiosity. Then it’s all over. Out through the door. Out into the dining room where the parquet floor is being polished on all fours. Out into the hall to take down his student cap. Down the marble staircase, which echoes. The great door bangs. A band is blaring away in the middle of the street, the sun blazing down, people stopping to stare or marching along in time. A gangling youth, bareheaded, with thin dark hair, dark eyes, and a trim mustache, stops in front of Henrik and touches his arm with an elegant walking stick.
    Ernst: Hello, Bergman. You won’t forget choir practice tonight, will you? Hugo Alvén is coming. At the Zwyck afterward.
    He nods and is gone.

    Now we’ll talk about Frida Strandberg, Henrik’s fiancée for the last two years. Of course, it’s a very secret engagement, known only to their closest friends. Neither Henrik’s mother nor the Elfvik aunts know about it. The girl’s family in Ångermanland know nothing either. But it is an engagement all the same, with an exchange of rings, sacred promises, lighted candles, and tender kisses.
    Frida is three years older than her fiancé, and she works as a waitress at the Gillet, the town’s most genteel hotel. She and several of the other staff live in wretched, drafty hovels right at the top in the attics of that massive building. The moral consequences of this mixed residence do not bother the management, but going in and out of bedrooms at night is prohibited. The only staff entrance is guarded by a Cerberus and his wife, who seem to lack the normal need for sleep.
    Frida is beautiful, a fine figure of a woman, big-boned, with high breasts and round hips under her long tight skirt. She wears her ash-blonde hair in bangs over her forehead and gathered into a knot on the top of her head. Her eyes are large, almost round, and observant, appraising and curious. She laughs often, surprisingly loud laughter, her lips shapely and chin round and definite. She looks determined with a chin like that. Her nose is long and nobly shaped. She speaks rapidly, with a broad accent, moves quickly, and carries herself well, whether bearing heavy trays in the hotel dining room or taking a Sunday walk in Fyris Park with her fiancé.
    They had met by chance. One of Henrik’s friends who often joined him for a meal at Cold Märta’s had inherited some money from an aunt and wanted to celebrate. They went to the Flustret down by Svandammen. Frida had a temporary summer job there, working upstairs in the private rooms. It was a warm evening, with heavy balmy scents coming through the open windows and military music from the pavilion.
    They were very drunk, Henrik most of all. When the party broke up to make their way to the brothel in Svartbäcken, the theologian proved impossible to resuscitate, so was left to his fate or Frida, who eventually (after finishing work at two o’clock in the morning) got hold of a cab. She managed to coax his address out of him and, with the help of the cabdriver, carried and dragged the still blind-drunkstudent up the stairs to his room. Nothing happened that night, except that Henrik vomited on Frida’s skirt, hit his head on the edge of the table, and bled fairly